


I Can't Be Sorry

by orphan_account



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Chanukah Fic, Comfort, Established Relationship, Fluff, Future Fic, Jewish Bitty, Jewish Jack, M/M, Mentions of Antisemitism, Mentions of homophobia, family holidays, mentions of coming out, past bullying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-10 19:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12918858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: This holiday, he’s determined to let it be so.Mostly because Jack comes into the kitchen and wraps his arms round Bitty’s neck, and pushes his nose there up against his pulse and kisses him so soft, and Bitty can feel the curve of Jack’s smile against his skin.  And then Jack whispers, “Hey bud,” which is a term of endearment which speaks novels up on novels of feeling and love between them that Bitty will treasure and hold on to for the rest of his damn life.





	I Can't Be Sorry

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not doing a lot of Check, Please, but I promised myself (and a few others) I would make sure to do at least one Chanukah fic. So here's one!
> 
> It's kind of a stream of consciousness, drawn heavily on my own experiences struggling with unsupportive parents (sorry, Bittles!) and struggling with faith and religion. There are some heavy themes regarding homophobic family and anti-semitism so be aware of that. I might write more as my term is almost over, but I'm not sure what kind of time I'll have.
> 
> Special shout-out to heyfightme for being such an incredibly A+ person and one of the few people who keeps me comfortable and happy in the Check, Please fandom.
> 
> To piesandpucks for always indulging me in my Jewish omgcp headcanons and filling my inbox with loads of them so when I make my way to tumblr, I have a soft place to land.
> 
> And to Serra who is my salt-mate for life <3

So up I got in anger,  
And took a book I had,  
And put a ribbon on my hair  
To please a passing lad.  
And, "One thing there's no getting by —  
I've been a wicked girl," said I;  
"But if I can't be sorry, why,  
I might as well be glad!" 

-Edna St Vincent Millay

*** 

He likes to think he’s a happy person. He smiles a lot, laughs a lot. He feels this compulsion like a Good Jewish Child to take care of people—keep them fed, keep them happy, to nag them relentlessly when he’s sure they’re not doing good enough to take care of themselves, and he tries not to feel the intense, internal resentment about it. And how long he spent not realising so much about himself because it was so obvious from so early on…

But. 

It is what it is, he supposes.

His father wrote it off as being too busy for ‘Little Dicky’ when he was younger—always at the school, always with ‘his boys’ as Eric stayed by his mother’s skirts and learnt all the recipes and the tradition and the gossip and the _nagging_. Everything Suzanne would have taught her sweet daughter, if things hadn’t gone as badly as they could go when Eric was born, and she hadn’t been force to leave the hospital having lost one uterus and gained one son.

She never seemed bitter about it, and Eric never felt any sense of resentment that his mother had lost the ability to share things with a daughter that she couldn’t share with Eric. At least, if she _did_ resent his birth for taking that opportunity away from her, he never felt it.

In a way, he supposed that’s part of what made up the good side of his parents. He never felt unwanted.

Not until he was older and it became obvious his ‘male’ genetic code wasn’t going to override all the things that Eric was. Soft. Sensitive. Emotional. Afraid. 

Unaware of himself.

Eric wasn’t foolish enough to pretend he was unaware of himself for long—that he didn’t know what his secret, lingering looks at tall, broad-shouldered boys meant, and how the Football Captain’s grin alone could make him blush so hard he swore he’d catch fire. By middle school he couldn’t pretend he didn’t know why he was being bullied, and beaten up, and locked into closets, and all he could do was vehemently deny the truth of those taunts and slurs only to get rid of _that look_ on his mother’s face whenever the topic was broached.

Which wasn’t often.

Eric and Suzanne Bittle were the typical sorts. The sweep it under the rug until it was gone or forgotten sorts.

Eric Richard Bittle Jr had grown up around those sorts. Everyone in his family were those sorts.

Every time his uncle sneered and made ‘nancy boy’ comments in his direction, everyone just…looked away. And Eric did his best to laugh it off and pretend like it was nothing because…

Well.

What else was he supposed to do?

So fast forward several years. Fast forward to a liberal college in the Irish Catholic North with the world’s smallest hillel—smaller even than Georgia State—on a team with a handful of other Jews, with a haus so queer-positive that Eric didn’t really know how he was supposed to exist in his own skin because frankly he had no practise at it.

Being thrown at boys for kissing, having his shoes puked on by his cute date, knowing he could ask the barista out for coffee and the worst that would happen was the guy would tell him no, and there wouldn’t be a couple of hyper-hetero jocks waiting for him in the alley to teach him a thing or two about having the nerve to exist as a gay-boy and breathe their air.

But all these things—these open things—doesn’t change him a whit when it comes to Jack Zimmermann and his Everest-sized crush, and his obliviousness toward Jack’s own sexuality, and his blossoming interest in Eric.

It works out, of course, and Eric’s world implodes, then explodes, and it’s full of everything he’d ever wanted. Mostly. It’s…

Well. It’s something.

It’s coming out to his parents in a fit of panic and hearing, “Oh Dicky, we always knew,” as though that’s supposed to absolve them of the hostile, obvious fear that their “Good Jewish Boy” was also a flaming homo, and apparently now living and fornicating with Jack Zimmermann.

And they don’t have to say it, but he can hear the undercurrent of blame in his parents’ voices as they try to ‘innocently’ ask whether or not Jack was ‘that way’ before he met Bitty. Like it was catching. Like Bitty had come out wrong, and contagious, and turned this well-proportioned, big, strong, athlete of a man into something….

Not.

Less.

 _Wrong_.

And doing things like keeping the Shabbat and not missing a single service, and finding a good shul in the neighbourhood close enough to walk so they don’t have to drive, and making his momma’s challah recipe, and using his bubbie’s challah cover that she sewed _by hand_ while the Nazis were raiding two villages over, is the only way that Bitty knows how to combat the sheer disappointed rage that would fall on his head if he told his parents the truth.

It’s ironic in a way, belonging to a faith which fosters questioning and doubting and cursing your God, and knowing the only way to keep your parents from totally melting down is by not doing those things at all. Was by being the ideal child and not giving his parents a reason to doubt.

So at night when Jack’s on a roadie and he’s sat on the edge of his bed, staring off into nothing and trying to reconcile the bad in his life, and the bad in the world, with the existence of a God, he vows never to speak it aloud. Because he can’t give his parents what they wanted—what his mother sacrificed her fertility for—the nice boy who was supposed to be strong and grow up and marry a nice girl and give her lots of fat grandbabies to spoil.

He couldn’t do that, simply by being born as he was. And they might not have ever spoken their resentment aloud—at least not outside of moments of anger—but he knows it’s there. Festering. Simmering. Waiting for that moment when he becomes a truly colossal fuck-up so the dam breaks and it all comes crashing around, drowning him.

He doesn’t even speak it aloud to Jack, who has once collapsed into Bitty’s chest and cried and shook and sobbed, and told him he was waiting for the same damn thing. Because Jack’s got his own demons, and they’re far bigger, and meaner than Bitty’s. So he bites his tongue and sits quietly. And in the weaker moments when he can’t hold it in, he doesn’t use words. Jack can tell though. He knows something, at least—enough to draw Bitty close to him and hold him when Bitty feels like he’s about to shake out of his skin.

It helps. 

It cures exactly nothing, and ideas of medication and therapy sit on the edge of his thoughts. But God, what would his momma think if he did that?

Maybe in a few years when he’s not on his dad’s insurance anymore, and he feels like a real, proper grown up and it’s something they never need to know about.

Ever.

For now, Bitty hums. He’s got sufganiyot under a cloth on their second prove, right before it’s time to fry them and fill them with jam, and roll them in sugar. He’s got the latkes mixed and ready to fry. The brisket is already baking, and has another hour to go.

The Menorah is on the table, the candles ready for lighting. On the coffee table in the living room is a bag of plastic dreidels and the gelt is neatly packaged in homemade bags Bitty found in pinterest. There’s blue and white fairy lights around the mantle, the compromise that Jack and Bitty agreed on, because all their neighbours had decorated their balconies for Christmas, and they had every right to hang up their own décor, but not a handful of months ago angry people wielding torches screaming, _“The Jews will not replace us_ ” was on every news channel, and Bitty can’t help the prickle of fear in his belly because they looked like such nice boys, and it’s so hard to tell when those ‘nice boys’ are the sorts who want to wipe people like Jack and Bitty off the face of the earth.

His mother and aunt kept saying that, over and over. “How can they be Nazis, they look like such nice boys.”

Bitty knows how ‘such nice boys’ can be monsters. He’s known those ‘nice boys’ since he was twelve years old and taking a fist to the kidney because it would hurt a lot, and bruise where his parents wouldn’t see it.

And he just doesn’t think he’s brave enough right now to wave his Jew Pride flag around because he just doesn’t know what those ‘nice boys’ would be capable of right now. He’s already read too many stories about Starbucks cups protest and wars on Christmas from them so…

This is good enough.

It’s a compromise enough.

It’s snowing, and he’s cosy in the sweater Jack got him last week, and he can hear his boyfriend humming to himself in the back room as he gets ready and they’re preparing to host guests. Their parents, who know each other. 

Bitty’s parents, who are going to put on polite smiles and say how happy they are that their boys are happy.

And the Zimmermanns that Bitty tries hard to love without resentment because they love Jack without all the exceptions, and without all the ‘in spite ofs’. And they love Bitty that way too, that pure, soft way that doesn’t come with the price of silence, and he’s not willing to give that up for anything. Even if it hurts in the face of his own parents whose love should be enough.

And sometimes it is.

This holiday, he’s determined to let it be so.

Mostly because Jack comes into the kitchen and wraps his arms round Bitty’s neck, and pushes his nose there up against his pulse and kisses him so soft, and Bitty can feel the curve of Jack’s smile against his skin. And then Jack whispers, “Hey bud,”-- a term of endearment which speaks novels upon novels of feeling and love between them that Bitty will treasure and hold on to for the rest of his damn life.

So yeah. Things hurt. His parents aren’t going to be better, not the way Bitty wants them to be. They’ll just be this. But he thinks that can be okay now, because this time, he isn’t alone.


End file.
